Instead of my rehearsing the arguments surrounding the Catholic prohibition of contraception (and its permitting, contrary to the teachings of St. Augustine, "natural family planning"), allow me to send you to the literature you should read to get a handle on the philosophical and theological issues. If you want to focus only on the 20th Century (bypassing Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas), you have to start with Pope Pius XI, "On Christian Marriage" ("Casti connubii"), Catholic Mind 29, 2 (1931): 21–64. Then read Pope Paul VI, "Humanae Vitae," Catholic Mind 66 (September 1968): 35–48; reprinted (pp. 167–83) in Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston, eds., Philosophy and Sex , 2nd edition (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1984). For criticism of Paul VI's encyclical, see (originally from Ethics ), Carl Cohen, "Sex, Birth Control, and Human Life," in Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston, eds., Philosophy and Sex , 2nd edition (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1984), pp. 185–99....

A few additional remarks. Kant's explicit condemnation of homosexual (or same-sex) sexual relations can be found in his Lectures on Ethics (the Vorlesung ). His arguments are grounded in the Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative (not the First, as suggested by the question), but mostly on his claim that homosexual acts are unnatural, "crimes against nature." For two essays on this apsect of Kant's views, see my "Kant and Sexual Perversion" The Monist 86:1 (Jan. 2003), pp. 55-89 -- also available at http://fs.uno.edu/asoble/pages/kmonist.htm -- and Lara Denis, "Kant on the Wrongness of 'Unnatural' Sex," History of Philosophy Quarterly 16:2 (1999), pp. 225-48. Finally, John Corvino's essay " In Defense of Homosexuality" (in A. Soble, ed., The Philosophy of Sex , 5th edition) includes this passage: "A Roman Catholic priest once put the argument to me as follows: 'Of course homosexuality is bad for society. If everyone were homosexual, there would be no society.'...

In response to the question, posed at the end---"Given its tendency to elicit support from the religious right, does anti-pornography feminism, especially of the moredogmatic type which assumes rather than proves harm from pornography,betray a quasi-religious and sex-negative world-view?"---I would argue, and have argued, "Yes." There is a type of anti-pornography feminism that assumes rather than defends with reasonable arguments that pornography of all types is harmful in various ways (or it refuses to investigate carefully the issue); this anti-pornography feminism is abundantly sex-negative (making the mistake, for example, of turning a romanticized and stereotypical feminine asexuality into feminism ); and it does not differ appreciably from the religious and politically conservative critiques of pornography. I argue this at length in my 2002 book, Pornography,Sex, and Feminism (Prometheus), although additional and important parts of the argument can be found in Chapter Six of my Sexual...

The idea can be found in Augustine. In the early 5th Century, he wrote, "A man turns to good use the evil of concupiscence . . . when he bridles and restrains its rage . . . and never relaxes his hold upon it except when intent on offspring, and then controls and applies it to the carnal generation of children . . . not to the subjection of the spirit to the flesh in a sordid servitude" ( On Marriage and Concupiscence , bk. 1, chap. 9). But the idea did not originate with him. I'm sure (in my intellectual heart) that it can be found in the ancient Greeks (late Plato?) and maybe even the Hebrews, in the West. (I dare not speak about Eastern thought, about which I am untutored.) But I cannot, offhand, provide sources. If we restrict the question to Christianity, the idea occurs earlier than Augustine --- not in St. Paul (note the absence of any talk of reproduction as the purpose of sex in 1 Corinthians 7) --- but in the once-sainted and controversial (and de-sainted) Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215),...

In what follows, I ignore "flirting," perhaps merely arbitrarily, because flirting is ubiquitous and seems too innocuous for a serious moral investigation; others might well disagree, and I ask them kindly to fill in the lacuna(e) in my reply. (Perhaps this question and its replies can be added to the "Sex" category of the web site.) I don't know what you mean by "cheated slightly ." We could have (there have been) many arguments, philosophical, theological, and polemical, over what counts as "cheating" and what doesn't, and what moral significance cheating of various types or degrees has. If only we could establish a continuum from tiny cheating to huge cheating.... To my ear, "I cheated [but only] slightly" sounds like an excuse someone might use to get off the moral hook (Clinton), hoping for a generous and sympathetic reply from the other person (he in effect got one from Hilary). As an older sister once said to her just-starting-college female sibling (in a full-page advertisement for a...

You might be interested in reading Innocent Blood by P.D. James. Some conservative sexual theorists would agree with your reasoning and use it as the reductio of the view that homosexuality is permissible (indeed, they might use it to criticize liberal sexual ethics altogether). A libertarian, and some liberals, would also agree with your reasoning, and accept the conclusion that incest, under certain conditions, would be permissible. Your point (3), by the way, is largely irrelevant, if you continue to frame it in terms of "love." Homosexual acts need not be justified in terms of their coming from or expressing love. Moral rights to self-determination (e.g., making decisions about how to conduct a satisfying sex life) seem enough. You could try to block the move from homosexuality to incest by invoking possible harms, but that might not be strong enough, especially because the harms would presumably be "self-regarding" (and few liberals accept moral paternalism). You raise a good question, and...

It is close to being true that (x)(Px ---> Wx), where "P" = "is a [great] philosopher" and "W" = "wrote about love," and "x" ranges over, say, human beings. Just to mention a few from the history of Western philosophy (and theology, which is also philosophy): Plato ( Symposium , Phaedrus ), Aristotle ( Nicomachean Ethics ), St. Paul (1 Cor 13), St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Michel Montaigne, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel, and Soren Kierkegaard. In the 20th Century, philosophers who wrote about love include Bertrand Russell, Simone de Beauvoir, Anders Nygren, Gene Outka, Robert Solomon, Harry Frankfurt, and many others. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on love that will be helpful, as does Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopedia . Many philosophers who wrote about love are discussed or included in two of my books, The Structure of Love (Yale, 1990) and Eros, Agape, and Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love (Paragon House, 1989).

Is it true that all states in which prostutition is illegal also legally permit the making of hard-core pornography in which performers are paid to engage in sex with each other? Surely there are some states that prohibit prostitution but do not ban (or at least do not prosecute) the making of pornography (California). But there also might well be states that prohibit both prostitution and the making of pornography, and prohibit the latter using the laws against the former. We need to do some legal research. I know that one feminist legal argument that tried to bring legal pressure to bear on pornography, without going the controversial route of the MacKinnon-Dworkin Ordinance back in the 1980s and 1990s, emphasized that the making of much pornography involved prostitution and hence could already be prosecuted under existing state laws. I do not know whether any jurisdictions capitalized on this argument in fighting pornography (either from a feminist or socially conservative perspective)....

Emotion-less or emotion-free creatures/beings have been explored in science fiction, including Stanley Kubrick's "2001" and "Star Trek." See what Wikipedia says about the 1956 B&W movie, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers .

One thing you can do is to scroll down the list of panelists, and when you come to a dude named "Alan Soble," click on the arrow to the left of his name (not on the name itself, since all hell will break loose if you do that). Almost all the questions answered by this panelist have to do with sex, many with sexual ethics. If you are slightly more ambitious, you might go to his encyclopedia entry at http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/sexualit.htm or, if you are more than slightly ambitious, you might read his essay "The Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Sex," which is in his book The Philosophy of Sex , 4th edition only (Rowman, 2002), or even the entirety of his reader-friendly book, The Philosophy of Sex and Love: An Introduction (Paragon House, 1998). Your question admits of such a long answer that it is impossible to answer it here without a panelist's other obligations (moral, political, sexual, occupational) suffering a great deal. And, after all, sex is not all that important. As Marcus Aurelius...